This is to notify you to cease and desist cigarette advertising. Legal liability for damages for words which aid and abet in causing harm up to and including death, has been established in the case of Paladin Enterprises, Inc v Rice , 128 F3d 233 (CA 4, 1997) cert den 523 US 1074; 118 S Ct 1515; 140 L Ed 2d 668 (1998). That case establishes that words that aid and abet the causing of foreseeable death lack First Amendment protection.

In a case of two firemen killed due to discarded cigarettes, a court went so far as to uphold criminal charges as fire or a "toxic substance" [such as tobacco] "is the prototype of forces" or substances "which the ordinary man knows must be used with special caution because of the potential for wide devastation, Commonwealth v Hughes, 468 Pa 502; 364 A2d 306, 311 (1976). Case law establishing the fire danger dates back to at least Commonwealth v Thompson, 53 Mass 231 (1847).

You are on notice of the hazard. The U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), book entitled Research on Smoking Behavior, Research Monograph 17, Publication ADM 78-581, p v (December 1977), said: "Over 37 million people (one of every six Americans alive today) will die from cigarette smoking years before they otherwise would." The Royal College of Physicians of London, Smoking and Health Now (London: Pitman Medical and Scientific Publishing Co, 1971), p 9, declared the smoking-caused death toll a "holocaust" due to the then "annual death toll of some 27,500."

The danger to smokers has received judicial recognition in case law dating back to at least Austin v State, 101 Tenn 563; 566-7; 48 SW 305, 306; 70 Am St Rep 703 (1898) affirmed 179 US 343 (1900). The hazard that cigarettes pose, which your advertising aids and abets in causing, has been further judicially established in case law including but not limited to Banzhaf v F.C.C., 132 US App DC 14, 29; 405 F2d 1082, 1097 (1968) cert den 396 US 842 (1969). In verifying cigarettes' deleteriousness, the court said: "The danger cigarettes . . . pose to health is, among others, a danger to life itself . . . a danger inherent in the normal use of the product, not one merely associated with its abuse or dependent on intervening fortuitous events. It threatens a substantial body of the population, not merely a peculiarly susceptible fringe group." This is not to be argued. The hazard is "beyond controversy," Larus and Brother Co v F.C.C., 447 F2d 876 at 880 (4th Cir 1971).

In The Nurnberg Trial, 6 FRD 69, 161-163 (1946), prosecution included Julius Streicher, a Nazi propagandist who was convicted and hanged for his pro-death media words. Prosecutions for tobacco deaths will therefore foreseeably include media aiders and abettors of tobacco-caused deaths.

The above is not intended to be a complete listing of the judicial recognition of the hazard; your lawyer has more. Your liability for damages due to foreseeable tobacco-caused deaths which advertising you have promulgated can foreseeably be found on the basis of same having aided and abetted the causing of said harm up to and including deaths. Any attempted defense by you that the aforesaid advertising lacked impact and ability to aid and abet same, will foreseeably lack credibility in view of anticipated testimony showing that advertising is promoted on the basis of its foreseeable impact and effect. Such foreseeable evidence will meet the criteria of the above cited case, Paladin Enterprises, Inc v Rice, 128 F3d 233 (CA 4, 1997), supra.

You have long been on notice of the hazard. This notice serves to put you on specific notice of your foreseeable liability and will constitute evidence that you were notified to cease and desist cigarette advertising. Non-responsiveness on your part to this notice, will foreseeably establish willfulness and reckless disregard of the danger and foreseeable harm up to and including death(s).